


filled with dark and swarming flies

by wanttobeatree



Category: Hannibal (TV), Slender Man Mythos
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Found Footage, Gen, Horror, Illustrations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27122506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanttobeatree/pseuds/wanttobeatree
Summary: NB This is anincomplete, abandoned work, posted for the Good Intentions WIP Fest.Will Graham disappears, leaving only some mysterious video footage behind.
Kudos: 10
Collections: Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs





	filled with dark and swarming flies

**Author's Note:**

> This is an unfinished work, written around 2013/14, in which Will is disappeared by what would eventually have been revealed to be the Slenderman.

_First, only static._

_Then the picture wobbles shakily into focus in a burst of colour and noise - it takes a moment to resolve itself into the crooked shot of a window; into the sound of at least half a dozen dogs furiously barking. The camera zooms in sharply on the view through the window: autumn trees, bleak fields, everything blurred and unremarkable._

_“Hello?” Will calls out from behind the camera. “Hello?”_

_The camera pans slowly back and forth. Will shushes his dogs. He moves closer, murmuring to the dogs in snatches that are only half-audible over the background noise, “It’s alri...” and “I won’t let...”, and the dogs whine in response. His breath is shallow and too fast, but he holds the camera steady._

_The window fills the shot as Will reaches out a hand to touch the glass._

*

The memorial service is inadequate.

This is unsurprising, given the farce of the empty casket and the press attendance and Will’s own limited personal connections, but nevertheless it rankles Hannibal to sit through something so mundane. The seats are packed with FBI agents and students displaying their solidarity; Hannibal notices a number of them discreetly wiping their eyes and his lip curls for a second in contempt, before he can school his expression back into a more appropriate mask of mourning.

There is no family in attendance. Of course, not even Will is in attendance.

Hannibal has often imagined, in the long weeks since the disappearance, a more just and perfect world. A kinder world. If Will must go, then let it be by Hannibal’s design. He imagines himself carving paper-thin slivers of Will’s liver to chew on raw, while he worked on what would surely have been his piece de resistance. The flavour in his fantasies is so rich and vivid he can almost taste it now. He should have tasted it. He should have been the one to consume Will so completely that he left no trace behind; the one to leave Crawford and his crew with no suspect, no scent, no clue.

Hannibal briefly closes his eyes. He bows his head. He breathes in the scent of too many bodies.

Perhaps this, then, is grief; the indignity of having lost something before one was quite finished with it.

*

_A five second clip: the camera pointed at Will’s face surrounded by darkness, his skin white and his eyes wide and his mouth moving fast, lips halfway through a sentence but the words inaudible beneath the consuming crackle of feedback and white noise. He swings the camera around to point unsteadily at his house. It is nighttime, foggy, but light is streaming out of Will’s house through every window, from every room. The front door is wide open. The image is flickering._

_“_ _I don’t know if-” Will begins to say, the audio suddenly coming through so clearly it is as if he’s standing in the room with you, before the screen goes blank._

*

*

Hannibal declines Katz’s polite invitation to the unofficial wake, citing a desire to be alone with his thoughts, but back at home he finds himself restless.

Nothing holds his interest in the kitchen, despite new recipes and new meat and the old desire to carve something with an exquisitely sharpened $100 dollar carbon steel knife, nor in any other room in the house. He pours himself a snifter of brandy and walks up and down the hardwood corridors, listening to the echo of his own footsteps, opening every door and window to let out the slightly acrid air. He considers reorganising his library into chronological order.

He considers going hunting. He stands in the middle of his office with his hands in his pockets, watching the clouds turn dark with night and with rain.

*

It had been the dogs, barking so loudly and in such distress they were audible even from the road, which had drawn the attention of a passing car. Hannibal has read the initial police report, as well, of course, as all the FBI’s consequent output: he knows that five dogs bolted as soon the front door was forced open by the concerned driver. The driver made some attempt to chase the dogs, before returning to the house. She looked through the front door. She called the police.

Of the five dogs that bolted, Hannibal has learned from the reports, one crawled under Will’s car and remained there for several hours until it died; three were caught, one later put down in the kennels, the remaining two as yet in no fit state to be rehomed; and one is still missing. A sixth, partially eaten, was found beneath Will’s bed by the police. It had died of cardiac distress before it was consumed.

Will, Hannibal knows, had seven dogs.

So he lingers on the bottom step of Will’s porch. He whistles softly, bending low and clicking his fingers, and waits until he’s certain nothing will respond. It is three am. The sky is moonless, starless, dark and cold. Police tape still hangs optimistically across the porch and over the - broken, repaired, now locked - front door, although the trail has long since gone cold.

Pulling on a pair of disposable gloves, Hannibal ducks under the tape. He takes two sausages from his pocket and leaves them on the porch. He breathes in slowly, straightens his tie, and slides the spare key he stole from Will’s bedside cabinet three months ago into the lock in the front door.

*

_The clip bursts into life already in motion, in unsteady, out-of-focus glimpses of dark floor and walls. A distorted wail of feedback and the image flickers into blackness for a split second and then resolves, the camera held steady now, the only sound Will’s unsteady breathing and pounding footsteps as he runs into the hall and up the stairs._

_He bursts through a door at the top of the stairs; the camera swings around wildly, taking in a dark and empty room. A glimpse of Will’s feet. The image glitches again, the static hissing - snatches of words corrupted and barely audible: ‘where… I think...’ - and the scene jumps to a view through an upstairs window, panning slowly across the view: it’s nighttime, but the moon is bright enough to pick out the fields, the river, a tangled clump of trees and shadow, the distant light of a passing car._

_Will’s breath suddenly speeds up and the slow pan jerks back to the trees, the long lines of branches like reaching limbs, zooming in on the shadows until they fill the screen._

**Author's Note:**

> Regrettably, that's all folks.
> 
> Even when writing, I couldn't decide if in the end Hannibal would also be killed by the Slenderman, or if he would kill and eat Slendy himself, so choose your own adventure.


End file.
